By Julie Hyland
http://www.wsws.org
17 January 2009
“Armageddon” is the word used by Times of London correspondent Martin Fletcher, the first eyewitness from the British news media to see the devastation wrought by Israel in Gaza.
Twenty days after the Israeli military unleashed its firepower on the narrow strip of land containing 1.5 million people—more than half of them children—there is “no one left in the ruins to hear the thunder of Israel’s guns,” Fletcher wrote.
The Times correspondent was one of only a handful of journalists allowed into Gaza under tight Israeli supervision on Thursday, and even then only to the outskirts—the edge of the town of al-Atara.
Fletcher described houses and apartment blocks “mostly reduced to their shells” by the constant bombardment, commercial units “crushed” and vegetable fields “churned up by tanks and bulldozers.”
[…]
As Brockmann spoke there was mounting evidence to confirm reports that Israel is using white phosphorus as a smokescreen for the incursions by its tanks and troops into residential areas. Phosphorus, which is illegal under Geneva Treaty of 1980 in built-up areas, causes terrible burns.
Abu Shaaban, director of the burns unit at Gaza’s Shifa hospital, told Christian Aid that the situation was a “disaster.”
“We have been receiving a very high number of patients with a strange burn,” he said, “completely different to the burns we are used to managing, very deep burns with a very offensive, chemical odour coming from the wound site…
[…]
via Amid talk of cease-fire, eyewitness accounts describe Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
see
The ugly secret of Barak and Livni, the Gaza rockets truth
Gaza ceasefire negotiations + Gaza and the Palestinian Authority
Mosaic News – 1/16/09: War on Gaza – Day 21
Dandelion Salad 
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If hamas did not fire 10,000 rockets then none of this would
be necessary. Even if israel had a rocket defense system,
it does not matter. Hamas would have kept resupplying and firing
rockets deeper and deeper into Israel. Israel finally said ENOUGH of this
of thisw game after being non responsive for 4 years to the rocket fire. Hamas is the cause of all the destruction and the gazans misery.
Maybe now they wioll put their foreign aid into rebuilding without rearming.
The world has given the palestyinians billions. It is time the world received
something back in return…It is called peace….toward israel
It’s time for the US to stop arming Israel!